


careless daughter

by multicorn



Category: Glee
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multicorn/pseuds/multicorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Santana’s sent to ballet class, and then she’s taken back out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	careless daughter

Santana was a wild child when she was five.  Not yet in school, her father let her mother decide what to do with her and her mother left her with her own mother all day, and her abuela’s door swung open and closed with a joyous  _bang_  to as she ran out to the neighborhood’s streets and empty yards.

She was always getting in fights with other kids - sometimes because the boys said she didn’t belong, or girls couldn’t play, and sometimes just because she wanted to, temper itching hot with the frustration that she couldn’t let out at her father when he made her mama cry.  She’d take it out on the boys in the playground instead, calling them out for hoarding toys or being sore losers, and rarely felt so happy as when she pinned one down in the dirt.

Sometimes she’d play by herself instead, when her parents weren’t fighting and the other kids wouldn’t let her in without one.  She had balls to bounce,  _thunk thunk_ , aginst the pavement, and deserted paths  to run and trees to climb.

Either way, she’d come home with scrapes on her knees and dirt in her hair, small and fierce like an alley cat.

 

One day in the summer before she started school - she didn’t find out why til years later - her parents were screaming at each other so loudly that she was scared, and she hid in her bedroom crouching with her hands over her ears, because usually it was only her father who screamed.  That night he left the house maybe half an hour after he’d come home, and he didn’t come back all night.  Her mama fed her dinner late, tear tracks still messy on her face, and told her,  _it’s going to be alright, mija, it’s going to be fine_.  Santana didn’t feel reassured at all, but as she ate and kicked her feet and talked about the squirrels she didn’t catch that afternoon, her mother’s smile crept back to her face again.

Her father came back the next day, stopping by in the morning to have the coffee that her mama had hopefully prepared, and heated conversations continued all week that she only heard a few scraps of.

_~_

_“That’s what I get for marrying a whore like you.  At this rate she’ll never learn how to be a lady - “_

_“She doesn’t need to be a lady, she’s only a child - “_

_“And when will she start?  Tell me that.  You’re always going to give her more time.”_

~

Her mother tells her the bare outline of it eventually, later.  How she’d agreed to compromise, find some sort of class to enroll Santana in, something feminine and respectable, to appease her father and get one more fight out of her hair.

“I shouldn’t have done it for him,” she says, so much later, voice bitter with all the regrets of her marriage.

“It’s okay,” Santana says, heart overfull with empathy.  “I loved it.  And I love you, mama.”  She leans over to give her a hug.

~

At the time, all Santana knows is that her abuela’s taking her to a brand new class, and she’s prepared to hate it because she wants to run free.  It’s horrid, at first, to stand still, to bend her arms and legs into shape and not move.

But when she learns how -

Something snaps into place, halfway through her first class.  She can feel the effort strain from her fingertips down into her toes, a thin line of pain all the way through her young strong body, and for the first time in her life she feels that _beautiful_  can be more than surface, can be bone-deep.  She raises her arm and slides out her scabbed-over knees and turns, and  _she_  is beautiful too.

She’s in a line with the other girls, and they’re all beautiful, they all fit.  Like little pieces in a puzzle.  When she follows the shape of the choreography without missing a beat, she can feel that she belongs.

Her mama picks her up from class and she runs into her arms, happily,  _mama look what I can do, what I did_ , and she spins around, arms over her head, and kicking out, and her mama’s smile is joy mixed with relief but Santana doesn’t notice of course, lost to the wonders of the world.

~

She dances up and down all night, through the kitchen and the hallway and the stairs, and in her room until she’s put to bed.  Again when she’s gotten up the next morning.  She holds out her arms so carefully, learning the language of grace, and bends her legs, and her father says she’s getting in the way.

She learns jumps the next week and she can’t stop doing them,  _thump thump thump_ , all through the house and she stubs her toe landing wrong and doesn’t last ten minutes until she starts again.   _Will you teach that daughter of yours to be quiet_ , her father says, loud and angry, but the ballet is magical and Santana runs ever deeper into the demands of its movements, and her mother doesn’t have the heart to make her still.

One more week, and they watch some clips of famous ballets in class, and Santana comes home talking about the costumes, how she never wants to wear a dress because they’re so impractical, except in dance, sometimes the skirts flare out and it looks like you’re flying so high, so high.

~

That’s the last ballet class she has.  There are more conversations she doesn’t quite hear again, and when it’s time for her to go to her class next week, her mama kneels down next to her and says  _I’m sorry, mija, your father and I have decided it’s not a good idea after all_.

Santana cries, and then she screams, and then she goes running furiously to the playground to look for a fight to pick.

And she learns a lesson for the next time:

When you fall in love with something beautiful, don’t let people know.


End file.
